


The Shelter of Your Arms

by thesadchicken



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Kathryn Janeway Needs a Hug, a tiny bit of angst? but everything's alright in the end, and she gets one!, mostly comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesadchicken/pseuds/thesadchicken
Summary: Here they are, tangled up in sunlight. Tired and content, limbs heavy with sleep, bodies still carrying the memory of last night.Kathryn needs comfort. Chakotay is there.Written for the Kathryn Janeway Needs A Hug Star Trek Fandom Event 2020.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 29
Kudos: 94
Collections: Kathryn Janeway Needs A Hug





	The Shelter of Your Arms

Here they are, tangled up in sunlight. Anchors aweigh—but the ship is at rest for now, and birdsong from a strange new world travels through the bulkhead. Here they are, tired and content, limbs heavy with sleep, bodies still carrying the memory of last night. Kathryn opens her eyes.

She sees him, before she sees anything else. Lying next to her. His hand, resting against the white sheets; morning flickering on his skin. She remembers tracing maps on his back; the sounds of his pleasure filling the room. Now she watches, and she is immediately hungry again. His shoulders; the back of his neck; his cheek, pressed into the pillow… She remembers the way he held her, charting the freckles on her shoulders and arms; _stars_ , he called them. Now she watches, almost holding her breath, unwilling to disturb his easy slumber just yet. He looks younger this way, the years lifted off his eyelids by daylight’s touch. His lips, half-parted, are curling upwards she thinks. Or perhaps she imagines it.

“Chakotay,” she whispers, slowly, savouring the taste of his name on her tongue.

He stirs, but does not wake. She smiles to herself, presses her fingertips to her mouth, draws her knees to her chest in girlish delight. Her gaze follows the lines of his tattoo—above his forehead, to his hair, how it falls onto the pillow, raven-black on pearl-white. Tentatively, she reaches out, but her hand falls back to the mattress between them. _Let him sleep_ , she thinks.

It’s late—almost ten hundred hours, the silver pocket watch on her bedside table says—but she knows there will be no chimes, no comm signals, nothing to tear her away from the moment. Shore leave. Only two days, but shore leave all the same. She thinks about Tuvok, the discreet approval in his voice when he bid her goodnight. The fondness in his eyes when he left. He knows, of course. This quiet morning is his gift to her, she realizes. He always looks out for her.

Guilt slips into her flesh, coiling around her belly like a serpent. The same old tune, playing again in the stillness of her mind. One hundred and fifty voices, a choir of disappointment, here to remind her that she’s condemned them. Suddenly she can’t bear to look at the man in her bed, at his disarming beauty, at all the bliss she does not deserve. She bites her lower lip, breathes in, out. She thinks of the things he’s shared with her, what he’s told her of his story. The constant turmoil. The list of his sorrows, never-ending. She knows that one of them is this—the seventy thousand light years she put between him and his life.

He endures it in silence. Him and one hundred forty nine others. She feels the weight of them on her chest, where his hands have been, where he kissed her last night. The shame comes back, burning a trail of fire across her cheeks. How can she rest after having stranded them here? Shore leave is for Starfleet officers. In the Delta Quadrant, she needs to be a hundred things more. She needs to be their leader; persistent, untiring, imperturbable. Larger than life.

She thinks about getting up and getting dressed, but her treacherous body seems to sink into the mattress, struggling for a few more moments of peace. That’s all it takes.

His arms slide around her before she can move away—at least that’s what she tells herself. Palms flat on her back, thumbs drawing invisible circles between her shoulder blades, he pulls her into an embrace, and she fights the urge to melt into it. _No_ , she wants to say. _No, I don’t deserve this_. But there is only silence where her words should have been. Silence, and the softness of his body against hers. She does not move. She is caught in the moment, unable to ignore its tug on her heart. Like gravity. 

Half-asleep, he pulls her closer. His lips touch her neck lightly, and his breath is warm and sweet against her skin. There is an innocence to the way he holds her, utterly unaware of what she is thinking. He smells of gentle things; lemon and honey and pine trees. She feels the prickling of tears behind her eyes and closes them tightly. It’s like stolen time, stolen happiness, to be here with him, to wrap her arms around him. But for the life of her, she can’t bring herself to let go.

“Kathryn.” There is wonder in his voice. As if he doesn’t quite believe it. He pulls back, just enough to look at her, just enough to see her face. He seems almost relieved to find her there, and he stares at her, unconcealed awe written over his handsome features.

“Hi,” she says, smiling. She can’t remember how to stop smiling.

He smiles back, dark eyes gleaming. “Hi.”

She allows herself to stare too, to run the back of her hand down his cheek, stopping where the corner of his mouth falls into a dimple. He turns his head, kisses her fingers. They graze his jawline, the light stubble there. He looks up at her and stops to read her face, over and over. Then he reaches for her again, pressing them close together, length to length, so that nothing can fit between them.

This embrace is deeper than the ones before, but just as soft. Time has forgotten them here. Alone, just the two of them, drifting. She can’t tell which heartbeat is hers. Her chin rests in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, her legs in the space between his. He is all around her, arched inward to receive her smaller frame. He squeezes once then lets go, gracious as ever, giving her the opportunity to withdraw. But she has no intention of leaving him now. 

She realizes that she’s been waiting for him to forgive her, when in his eyes she has always been blameless. It feels like she can finally breathe, the air in her lungs unsullied by the choice she made when they first arrived—the years she wasted, the lives she ruined. He is here now, _he is here_. And she becomes weightless; far beyond shame, far beyond guilt. Her face is wet with tears she doesn’t remember shedding.

“You’re not alone, Kathryn.” He says this all the time, but she knows that he will say it again. And again. Patiently, time after time, until she believes it. A kiss on her cheek, then: “You’re never alone.”

She believes it. In the shelter of his arms there is nothing but this moment, and tenderness unlike anything she has ever known before. Not alone. Never alone. She holds him, _Chakotay_ , _my partner, my best friend_.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ♡  
> I just want to say that the Voyager fandom is truly amazing. So much talent! And kindness!


End file.
